Books: It Was All True

"I never could invent an effective lie," Novelist Joseph Conrad once
confessed. In this richly documented study, Author Jerry Allen
demonstrateswith details assembled over a period of ten years from
the four corners of the world that most of Conrad's novels are
scene-for-scene, character-for-character transmutations of the
extravagant adventures of his youth.

The adventures began when Conrad (real name: Teodor Joózef Konrad
Korzeniowski), the orphaned son of Polish intellectuals, defied his
guardian and went to sea at the age of 16. Nostromo, for instance,
describes with photographic precision a revolution he witnessed...